Delegate vs Abdicate

The first time you do this, you’ll likely not get it right.

You’re deep in production, you realise you need support, but you haven’t provided enough time for on-boarding.

You hand off the work. Explain it with as much detail as you can. You review the tasks and answer questions but because you don’t believe in micromanaging, you leave them to it.

When you view the work, it’s not anywhere close to where you needed it to be.

You take back the work because you realise you can do it quicker yourself.

This wasn’t delegating, it was abdicating.

You don’t realise the impact this has on that individual and trust will be broken with them at that moment.

In the book constraints there’s a story about an irrigation company, they found that they save water by drip feeding the resource. You need to do this with your delegation. It should be slow and consistent but overtime, can produce better results.

Set up a system of continuous feedback that works for both parties, whether it be daily or weekly, at the start of the week and the end of the week, having a system in place with help with consistency.

Take smaller tasks and build up to larger ones. Give them aspirational goals instead of committed goals to help them hit the flow.

Delegating is a tough skill to get right but knowing the difference between abdicating and delegating will be the starting point to growing a team who trusts one another to do the work without too much oversight which allows you to look for new challenges.